August 12, 2012

von der Heydte wonders where the Warhammer players are?

Call to Arms 2012 is 6 days away and I am thoroughly looking forward to it. This will be my 4th Call to Arms but first not playing Warhammer Fantasy. The last three years I have taken my Dwarfs with last years Karaks Eight Peak campaign tournament probably my favourite event of all time. This year the WHFB field is surprisingly... actually shockingly small at just 12 players, down considerably from the 30+ that regularly attend the event.

Correction to the above the WHFB field is a very healthy 22 - which is great to hear!!!

The Late War FOW event that I'm entered in is by comparison pretty big with 34 players including 3 from my local club - myself, Bob Pearce and Derek Forester. But the big winner appears to be Warmachine with nearly 50 registered players for the WM section of the tournament. I have to admit that the numbers dont surprise me as over the last few months I have steadily lost interest in playing WHFB although I have been enjoying painting my Ogres immensely. It appears that many in the local community are also losing interest in WHFB and shifting to other games.

In regard to Warmachine I did play this for quite some time collecting approx. 2500pts of Mk1 Menoth or 250+pts under Mk2 before selling nearly everything a few months after Mk2 came out. My local club used to have a big WM community with 4-6 tables going every night but I havent seen it at the club for 2 years, and without anyone to play against simply sold up and started FOW instead.

Had a good play test game against Bob Pearce last Thursday with my von der Heydte CTA list vs. his Panther/Tiger Company. Playing no retreat the game ended in a bit of a stalemate after my trap teams wiped out his Tigers. His sole Platoon of Panthers lacked the strength to force my FJ off any of the objectives and as I had lost my Paks and Jagdpanthers I couldnt kill him unless I left my positions and assualted him. So in the interest of throwing a lot of dice thats what I did.

Trap Teams are fantastic - you just have to remember to give yourself room to deploy them i.e. leave terrain areas clear. Opponents also need to make sure they dont advance Tanks through Forests as, like Bob, they will find themselves in a terrible position. The new "sneak up on tanks" rule meant that when Bob put his Tigers into a small forest I had room to deploy 2 Trap teams behind them. Without recourse to defensive fire I assualted his tanks with each Trap Team wiping them out pretty easily.

Did learn though that there are going to be some horrible lists at CTA including at least two that will be taking 20+ SU122 bunker busting Russian Tanks. I mean *ugh*

Oh and I finally saw the new Batman movie on Friday - my wife and I bunked off work for the day and went to the movies for the first time in 3 years (I am serious about that - problem with having kids). It was amazing, stunning and 1-2 small plot holes aside - brilliant.

Anyway this time next week expect a lot of Battle Reports and pictures from CTA...

Part of it is that wellington already has exclusive fantasy tournaments. Thus when then there is a mixed tournament going on then, it has to via for other players and probably will lose out more so due to high number of WHFB already present. It's a shame but a normal Wellington tournament WHFB is about 22-28 Players.